


Leave My Body (Ceremonials, Part One)

by GirlInterrupted36



Series: Ceremonials [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Absent Parents, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Bernadetta Von Varley - Freeform, Bernadetta von Varley Needs a Hug, Byleth is bad with names, Byleth the guidance counselor, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, Pining, Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc Backstory, forgotten friends, let there be cake, secret assassin, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26167687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlInterrupted36/pseuds/GirlInterrupted36
Summary: Bernadetta and Yuri: an eventual maybe love story! In Part One of this new series, Bernadetta heads to the dining hall for a snack. While there she runs into Yuri, but, scared he will recognize her, hides under a table. After retreating to her room, Bernadetta begins to write a story in her favorite notebook detailing all of the things she isn't courageous enough to say in real life.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/Bernadetta von Varley
Series: Ceremonials [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900279
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Leave My Body (Ceremonials, Part One)

Bernadetta

I had come to the dining hall for a snack. That was it. Just a simple snack. There were many, many things I had _not_ come to the dining hall for, starting with socializing with my classmates and ending with being spotted by HIM.

I crouched down behind the wooden dining hall table and peered up over the too-thin tablecloth to watch as he stood in line, plate in hand. It couldn’t be him. He spun around quickly, his gray eyes immediately latching onto my position. “Crap,” I muttered, ducking down so that I was largely obscured beneath the table. I watched as his feet reached the end of the line and then turned and marched closer, closer, closer, finally drawing to a stop right next to admittedly not great hiding spot. Maybe he hadn’t seen me? Maybe he just wanted a spot to sit and eat and this was the only seemingly empty table? Because, I mean, who would notice me under there? Maybe—

“Bernadetta.” His tone was one hundred percent no nonsense. “I saw you staring.”

I drew my chin into my knees and tried to make myself as small as possible in the hopes that I might disappear. If I made myself suuuuuuper duper tiny, maybe he really wouldn’t notice me. Maybe he’d forget he’d ever known me to exist.

“Bernadetta. Come out now. You are being completely ridiculous.”

He wasn’t forgetting. Oh no. He was definitely not forgetting. I scooted out from under the table on my butt, surrounded by peels of laughter from the other monastery students who had chosen that hour to eat. I couldn’t see the red heat flood my face, but I certainly felt it like someone had shined a spotlight on me. I stared at the floor and wished I could die. Or at the very least leave my body behind and become one with the air. That would be nice. Air certainly didn’t have the problems I found myself facing.

Above me, Yuri offered me his hand. “A hand, my lady?”

I chanced a glance upwards, and saw his trademark smirk, complete with pink eyeshadow. Another small scoot backwards, and then I was up and skittering away like the big chicken that I had always been. My academy boots pounded the pavement of the hallway that led to the courtyard that led to the dormitory and then I was slamming my room door behind me as I sank to the floor amid a pile of discarded books. The tiny scar on his face. The way he carried himself. The flop of his bangs across his forehead as he moved. He told us when he first appeared at Garrag Mach that he’d used a lot of names, but none the one…

It had to be him.

Didn’t it?

“T-this isn’t like your fan fiction, Bernadetta! T-this isn’t s-some cheesy story where the boy and the girl are be-best friends as kids and f-fall in love and get torn apart and t-then reunite many years later in a completely di-different spot as totally different people to c-come back together and live h-happily ever a-after!!!” I was rambling, talking too much, too fast, too nervous, again. “S-stop it, Bernadetta! S-stop it!!!!” I slapped my hands on the ground by my sides, scattered the book collections. Books. The only friends I had trusted since…

I picked up one of my notebooks, my favorite notebook, the one with the little brown bear on the cover, and I flipped through the pages frantically. “Where i-is it???” I cried to no one in particular. The bear certainly wasn’t going to answer me. There. There it was. “Arthur,” I whispered.

I remember him like I remembered the best moments of my life. Because he _had been_ the best moments of my life. How I met him when we were both young, how we’d play in the garden together, how he got his scar. How I started to feel myself fall in love with him despite years of swearing to myself that such things would never happen to me. And everything that had happened after.

“God, Bernadetta!” I cursed myself. “You were so st-stupid.” I got up and flopped over on my bed, rolling twice so that I was firmly ensconced in my blanket like one of the fish burritos from the dining hall. If I could stay there, all wrapped up, I could stay in one piece. I could stay safe from the confusing feelings that threatened to topple me.

There was a knock on the door. “Bernadetta!”

Professor? Now? Why? Oh god, did she know? Did _everyone_ know? Unfurling myself from the blankets felt too risky with all of the emotions that were threatening to explode from me.

“Bernadetta, come to the door!”

Professor’s voice reminded me of my mom’s. Before everything with my parents went crazy. The nice mom, the secret mom, the one my father never got to see after the first time he hit her. But I couldn’t get attached to Professor, not in the ways I’d let myself get attached to people before. Bad things happened to the people I got attached to. It was better to keep quiet, to keep my head down and follow the rules and be by myself. I wanted to leave my body for the second time that day, and I could pretty much guarantee it would not be the final time.

“Bernadetta, I was asked to come and check on you, so I need you to come to the door please.” The irritation in Professor’s voice had crept up to one thousand. I didn’t want her to be irritated. What if she started to feel about me the way my parents had?

I reluctantly unrolled myself and went to the door, dragging the blanket behind me. “I-I am here. You can g-go.”

“May I come in?”

I thought for a second and said, “I’d rather b-be alone, if t-that’s okay.” No one should have to see blanket Bernadetta. She was only a disappointment. Well, I was a disappointment in most aspects of life, but that was beside the point.

Many seconds more of silence before Professor said, “Would it work if I told you I had cake?”

“You said that last time. And t-there was n-no cake.”

“There is really cake. I was informed it is polite to bring cake when someone is feeling bad.”

Professor was so odd. It was part of why I liked her.

“Look out the peephole, Bernadetta.”

I drew the blanket around my shoulders and followed her instructions. There was indeed a plate with the biggest piece of chocolate cake I had ever seen floating on the other side of the door. I reluctantly unlocked the door and stuck out a hand. “I w-will accept this cake.”

I yanked the cake inside and prepared to shovel it into my face as I tried to shut the door, but Professor stuck her foot in the gap before I got it shut. “It is my understanding,” she began, “that causing a scene in the dining hall is frowned upon.”

My forkful of cake froze midway to my mouth. “I-I am sorry, Professor. I can j-just stay in my room from n-now on.” It was what I had always wanted anyway, to live and study from my room. I didn’t need to battle, or go to war. And I certainly did not need to socialize.

“That’s not what I meant, Bernadetta.” She paused, and then continued, “I may not understand the things you are feeling, but I do hope that you have someone to talk to about them.”

Why talk about my feelings when I could write about my feelings. I stared at the pile of notebooks, the one with the teddy bear still on top. I did have a way to talk about it. A way that would never dare to talk back. “I-I do have someone to talk to. His n-name is…is…Arthur.” It was the first name that popped into my head. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but then I had, and it was out, and it was on hundred percent too late to take it back.

The Professor’s brain whirled almost audibly as she tried to place the name. “Arthur…Arthur,” she muttered under her breath. “Arthur…” And then, “FUCK. Did I forget another one of their names??”

I jumped back so suddenly at her verbal explosion that I lost my grip on my fork and accidentally stabbed a hunk frosting off the top of my giant cake slice. “S-sorry, Pr-Professor, I-I…” I opted to set the cake down before it slid out of my hands and it’s delicious nature was forever lost to the dust bunnies of my dormitory floor.

“No, no, Bernadetta, I apologize,” she hastily spat out as she pulled her foot out the door. “It was I who was in the wrong.” Under her breath so I barely caught it, she added, “And clearly I need to go study more…”

I let the door drift shut behind her and then sat at my desk and jammed fork full after fork full of cake into my face to keep any more stupid words from leaving my mouth. The words that left my mouth were never solid words. Never correct. The were always altered, always wrong. But the words I wrote with my paper and pencil…Now _those_ were the real words.

I finished the last bite of cake, dragging the fork sideways across the plate to scrape up as much leftover frosting as I could manage. I grabbed my notebook and pencil before retreated back to my bed and the safety of my blanket cover. When I wrote, I could say all the things I could say any other way. And I was never a disappointment and never let anyone down. In writing, I could let go.

* * *

_There once was a young princess named Beatrix who lived all alone with her parents, the king and queen, in their giant palace. Now this princess had everything she could ever want for by way of possessions. She had the best clothes, the latest school technology, the greatest weapons. But where Beatrix lacked was in emotions. She struggled to understand love, because she had so rarely received it. It seemed like, to the king and queen, everything else came first. The girl’s mother tried her best, but her father was much too controlling, which made her mother afraid to step out of line. There would be a secret touch to the back of her hand, the occasional lingering of a hair brush in Beatrix’s medium length tresses, but never a hug. No I love you’s to speak of._

_Appearances were everything to Beatrix’s father. He hired teachers to drill arts and sciences into Beatrix, gave her more schoolwork than anyone had business piling on a single child. He forced the local tailor to make her the best clothing, even though no one would see it but the palace guests. There were even classes in manners, how to behave, how to act, how to speak. Beatrix could not make a single move her father had not approved himself, lest she face his harsh disapproval. And Beatrix hated that disapproval more than anything. She found that no attention from her father was the best attention. She kept her head down and studied hard, doing her best to do what she was told and make her parents proud._

_The king allowed Beatrix not a single real friend, instead forcing her to have tea and meals with the children of their royal guests to keep them entertained while business was upheld. Beatrix had to pretend to like these sorts of things; she found people her age hard to understand, with their laughter and their stories of the outside world and places she could never hope to go. The more she had to talk to her peers, the more nervous she became._

~~_That all changed when she met Albert._ ~~

~~_Bernie. Stop. Met is way too strong a word._ ~~

_That all changed when she first saw Albert._

_Albert was the most gorgeous boy that Beatrix had ever seen. His short blue-ish brown hair framed his face in all the right angles, the top sticking up in just the right way. And his gray eyes…She shuddered just thinking about those eyes and the confidence held within them. Even as he trailed behind the gardener in the flower garden, clearly a new assistant trying to learn, Beatrix could tell just by the way he carried himself that Albert was meant for great things. Better things than she was, for sure. Could he be for her what no one else had ever been? She wasn’t sure what she felt for him exactly, but she wanted to find out. She just wasn’t sure precisely how to go about that._

_When Albert’s eyes met Beatrix’s for the first time that day in the garden…_ ~~_That BODY. Beatrix wanted Albert so bad._ _NO NO NO, Bernie, NO._~~ _Beatrix thought perhaps that he could be the actual friend that she had always wanted. Not like those stuffy children that streamed through and bragged about their lives while scoffing at her cookies and tea. No. Albert was something real, and Beatrix could tell that without even exchanging a single word with him. So she started going down to the courtyard every day in the hopes_ ~~_that he would kiss her_ ~~ _that he would look her way again, just one more time, and perhaps say hello. She could not wait to say hello in return._


End file.
